Sunday, January 20, 2008

Blog inspired quilt

Friday evening I was surfing the Artful Quilters Web Ring and came to Diane in Maui who showed a picture of a quilt she had just made and said it was super easy and had learned it from another blog. So I checked out Dying to Quilt and saw her easy step-by-step instructions for a 9-patch turned into something more interesting. It looked so interesting and easy, I decided to spend part of the weekend doing it. You start with a simple nine patch -- in this case I used 5 inch squares. When it's sewn together, iron and square up, and then cut into four as in the picture. [My pictures replicat hers, but she used her own dyed fabric which is prettier than my commercial fabrics]

Next, flip the upper right and the lower left segments 180 degrees, as in third picture and sew them back together. Viola! you have a complex looking block that isn't complex. I made a total of 20 blocks. I used Diane's suggestion of keeping the center block the same -- because it will form repeated pairs of small squares. I also decided to make the blocks above and below that center block a contrasting color, in this case orange, the top a deeper orange and the lower a more apricot-orange. I was not at all sure of what I was doing but, hey, I was using odds and ends of my stash. Why not?

I made twenty squares in all, and finally they are laid out on my "design floor" where I moved them around until I liked the balance and noticed a couple that were sewn wrong and redid them. Then I sewed them together, sewed on a very dark green border and chose, from my stash, a backing and a bright orange that I'll cut into bias for the binding ... but I've got another quilt to quilt before I get to this so the final product may not show up for a while. But it WAS super easy, I think it looks much more complex than it is and I thank Dying to Quilt whose name is nowhere in her blog. So I think of her as CAQ -- creative anonymous quilter. I may make another from this idea since I love scrap quilts and it's a great way to use up pieces left from fat quarter quilts, within a color way. I think the internet is GREAT!

Calender Pages

About Me

The mid-70s are a surprise! Part of me remains in the 50s -- age, I mean, not decade of 20th century. It's a joy ride, new experiences land in my lap and I've become a better quilter, poet, writer than I expected. It's a rich life for a person never rich financially. Hey, this is what the mid-70s are like!